Like many of you, I've been watching the big changes in user interfaces over the past few years, trying to make sense of them all. Is there a common explanation for the controversies surrounding the Windows 8 UI and Unity? Where do GNOME 3, KDE, Cinnamon, and MATE fit in? This article offers one view.

I get the pun, but you're right. The immobile taskbar goes against what most people have come to expect from a GNU/Linux based OS: An extremely customizable interface. Unity's "do it our way or not at all" paradigm is extremely anti-user. Even the two most popular commercial OSes, Windows 7 and Mac OS X, allow you to move and alter desktop elements to a degree. While it's not as much freedom as you get with, say, Xfce, it's far more than what Unity (and Gnome 3) offer the user.